


holy city of byzantium

by antarcticas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Old Katara/Old Zuko (Avatar), POV Second Person, Prose Poem, Self-Discovery, Soulmates, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27188806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas/pseuds/antarcticas
Summary: You are Zuko, and she is Katara, and these are your lives in retrospect. Here you do not belong to each other, because here there was a war, and you both have spent decades regretting the spoils of your victory.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

_ i. _

_ That is no country for old men. The young _

_ In one another's arms, birds in the trees, _

_ —Those dying generations—at their song, _

_ The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, _

_ Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long _

_ Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. _

_ Caught in that sensual music all neglect _

_ Monuments of unageing intellect. _

  
  


When you win the war, you are fourteen. You heal the boy of fire, use your broken hands to make him a monument, build him up into an emperor, and then you leave. You have spent many days leaving, and this is nothing new. You are fourteen, and you have won the war.

Do you remember, a year ago? The iceberg—your lungs shaking, your eyes alive? You have won destiny, played fate like a game. And now this is your world, your cycle, and you hold the world in your fists. 

The young Avatar, a boy, comes to your side, and you let him take you across all of the seas. He ties you to him like a vice, and when you are fourteen, you do not want to let go. His grip feels like peace, like heroics. You are Katara, and you have never belonged to anyone. It feels nice, at first, to be someone's. 

Have you ever won a war?

When you win a war, you do not care about the individuals; the casualties of war are not just people. They are objects and creatures, as well. But do not forget that they are people. Do not forget, in your subjectivity, to consider yourself a mountain—do not forget to fall alongside the others. 

You travel the world, and by all accounts, you have won everything. You smile with the boy at your shoulder. This is all that has ever mattered— 

You are fourteen, and nobody has told you that a war is everyone’s loss. You have time, and this will grow old, fast. 

It starts at your wedding, and then you are enclosed in your own hundred-year-long ice cage. You have children, and you have a husband, and the world sings to you, at you, until it does not. One day you wake up and then you realize that you are alone. You have always been alone. What is love?

Love is peace. Love is what you have. Love is the man at your shoulder. Except—

(Love is something you lost, born in a windy palace, sewer grates under your feet, sliding up your spine. This love is something you lose too soon.)

When you lose the war, you are twenty-five. You stand outside of the place that is not home, and you cry. You do not belong to anyone, and yet you have doomed yourself. 


	2. Chapter 2

_ ii. _

_ An aged man is but a paltry thing, _

_ A tattered coat upon a stick, unless _

_ Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing _

_ For every tatter in its mortal dress, _

_ Nor is there singing school but studying _

_ Monuments of its own magnificence; _

_ And therefore I have sailed the seas and come _

_ To the holy city of Byzantium. _

  
  


You are a ruler, and therefore your life is not your own. Your soul is in pieces, and you gift it out to others simply—there is no room for you in the girl with knives, no space in your soul to harbor some sort of innocent love. You are a ruler, a scarred survivor, and you have nothing to give but your mind. 

To create, you destroy. You must work for them all, and so you take apart your bones, remove every nerve tingling in your brain, and then you do not remain yourself. You are Zuko, and you only belong to others. How could one speak, and say they are not their people? How do you?

A water girl takes all of these pieces in a courtyard and sews up every inch of who you are, and that bleeds worse, because she is not meant for you. You go to sleep, and she whispers in your ear, and when you wake up she is gone. 

The next times you see her, she is not the same. Her life belongs to her, and you will never know such things. You have won a war, and you are an emperor, and you are young. You are sixteen, and your crown burns your skull. You will spend more than half a century wishing to take it off. But you do not. You have won a war, and every inch of you is a casualty. 

Dragons do not deserve understanding. All you have ever wanted is to be wanted, explicitly, invariably, but you do not deserve that. You barely won this war. You almost lost this war. You do not belong here. This is not your story, you have to remember. You may have won, but you are still the villain. You do not deserve what you have. You have nothing.

It is simple. You are a problem child, and you are with problem people. You stay pressed against the girl with knives, because that is what you deserve. You try to fix your mother, your father, your sister. You do not even have your daughter. 

All you ever wanted was to be wanted. Emperor of the broken wastelands, lift your head down. We do not want to see you. Nobody wants to see you. 

It starts when you are crowned, and then for years it burns your spine. You remember cool touches and understanding. You are a villain and a victim, and this is not a dichotomy. Sometimes, at night, you do not want to hold back. 

It occurs to you when you are old, that this is suffering. You throw the metal off, and it imprints into your fingers. You do not care. 

The day you are born, you breathe at midnight. That is the day you lose the war. You have never belonged to anyone. 


	3. Chapter 3

_ iii. _

_ O sages standing in God's holy fire _

_ As in the gold mosaic of a wall, _

_ Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, _

_ And be the singing-masters of my soul. _

_ Consume my heart away; sick with desire _

_ And fastened to a dying animal _

_ It knows not what it is; and gather me _

_ Into the artifice of eternity. _

When you meet again, it is not the same. Have you wasted your life? You do not know what that means. There are good things to have come out of this; the young Avatar that you now know intimately, your children loving, and dancing. Your children. You have always loved your children, but this life has taken what you wanted, love of a special kind, and ruined it.

It is late, now. It is too late. You are fine, and you have accepted all of your losses. You must. What would you do without them? It is always late in the south. A part of you watched your Avatar die, and then wanted to lie as well.

What does it say about this Katara, carved of snow? What would the little girl with ice in her eyes tell you now? You belong to nobody, and yet you have tied yourself to somebody. You must stop calling existence a curse. Existence is not your prison. This is all manufactured. Listen to me—

Can you hear me? This is all manufactured. There are no rules in the universe, only in your mind. You have not lived for yourself. It is time to live for yourself. Take the parts of yourself that detest yourself, and carve, inside of yourself, a space for your love. And this belongs to you. You lost the war, and you lost yourself, and the world has apologies. You deserve more, water girl. You have always deserved more than fate deigned to place upon your shoulders—

You wanted love? You wanted to be more than wanted. You wanted to be considered for all the edges of your soul. But at that same moment, what does this mean? Should you not want to live a life in the ideal, clutching onto orange robes with broken fingers? 

You need to stop listening to what others say. This is going to be your loss. What do you want, Katara? What do you deserve? This is not a question of what your path is. It has been so many years. Are you not better than this?

(You know you are. You made your mistake when you were fourteen, and it is something that creeps into you. It hurts, because it was necessary.)

There is a reason for your reality. You have made the world a better place. That is all that matters. You are meeting again, and it is not the same. 

(Yes, the world would have been a different place. You have both tried. It is alright, now. It is time to let go.)

He comes on a boat, his face wrecked and beautiful, and you hold your hand up to his knuckles, and you cry. You have had plenty of times, and the sun will round the moon again, will trace you across the sky. You are old, worn, but you are here, and he has caught up to you.


	4. Chapter 4

_iv_

_Once out of nature I shall never take_

_My bodily form from any natural thing,_

_But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make_

_Of hammered gold and gold enamelling_

_To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;_

_Or set upon a golden bough to sing_

_To lords and ladies of Byzantium_

_Of what is past, or passing, or to come._

When you see her, when she presses a hand to your cheek, you realize nothing has ever changed. Nothing will ever change. Nothing did. 

You are Zuko, and she is Katara, and these are your lives in retrospect. Here you do not belong to each other, because here there was a war, and you both have spent decades regretting the spoils of your victory. 

There is something nonsensical in her blue eyes. It looks strange, looks happy, looks like coming home. And you have done better than many—you have taken back a razed empire, have built it into something beautiful. Does that matter? For the books, it will matter. For the story told, it will matter. 

For you and her, in all the moments outside of this, it will not matter. It will never matter. The crown does not matter, and even the flesh and blood and bones will not matter. 

This is the sin of war—war separates all, creates narratives that cannot be told. War creates societies of hate, and expectations of perfection. Nothing exists so raw, red, fresh as this pure understanding. The way that Katara is standing cannot be described as avarice, and neither can you. This is stronger than this. The two of you can stand on this flat tundra, and this cannot be claimed as a mistake. If this was a mistake, the skies can apologize. 

The sun, the moon, the stars. The galaxy itself knows the truth so intimately. It is the planet which makes mistakes, sometimes. To no fault but its own. You are all human. 

She may have had the Avatar—you may have had the knife-girl—and yet, so what? Who claims that love is limited to visualized endings? Who claims love is seen underneath bed sheets? Love can be hands to lips, blood rushing through a dead man’s veins, eyes shining when they are aged. Love is not something that war can take away from us. Do not let war take love away from you. You should be wanted, she should be deserved. 

Will you have her? Will you cherish her for her passion, her ingenuity, her strength at all quiet hours?

Will she have you? Will she love your strength, your intensity, your passion for all things that can be seen?

This should not be a hard question. Ignore the war. Now tell this story as if there was no war. 

(This is a love story, and it will always be.)

You may leave, now. Let go. Find yourselves again—and love each other, in that life. Love each other, without these wars. 

**Author's Note:**

> poem by William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium". this is the most self-indulgent thing I have ever published on AO3 <3\. anyhow, I'm a nerd, and I really enjoy writing prose, and I think these two are soulmates. so. if you read to the end, I'm incredibly impressed with you. this is fairly boring. but um
> 
> so Sailing to Byzantium is sorta about how life gets sick of the elderly, and always comes in the new - and so the narrator travels to Byzantium, a holy city, full of wise souls. this is sort of what I stuck to. in Byzantium, it becomes clear that to acknowledge life in its fullest, you must acknowledge death. anyway, it's just a lot, but it fits the ATLA Zutara soulmate canon compliant thing for me, because I like to think that as they age they realize that they love each other. but they don't have to remember life by material things. they can remember it for all that did and did not exist - and they will find each other again. 
> 
> I guess literature is what we see in it and I read, like, everything from a Zutara lens. oop. but yeah! if you stuck with that, thanks! have a great day :)


End file.
